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Key Republican says Blouin bonus no surprise, others were

June 21, 2006 By

A key Republican says it was really no surprise to him and fellow legislators that Governor Tom Vilsack gave a huge bonus to his economic development director. Senator Jeff Angelo, a Republican from Creston who is co-chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, says the surprise was that hundreds of other state employees were getting bonuses.

“A lot of us were surprised by how widely-used the bonus system was being used by this administration,” Angelo says. “It’s being used with some regularity.” Governor Vilsack paid Mike Blouin, his former economic development director, a 59-thousand dollar bonus every year in addition to the top salary possible for that department director’s position.

Blouin talked with Radio Iowa today about that bonus. “What the negotiated agreement was is there would be a salary of $182,000 or something like that, annualized, for as long as I was there,” Blouin says. Blouin left his job as head of the Greater Des Moines Chamber of Commerce in late 2002 to take the top job in the state Department of Economic Development, but it was a pay cut and Angelo, the co-chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, says the debate among legislators at the time was not about the level of that bonus, but about where the money would come from.

“Where we were concerned over the bonus had to do with actually raising that money out of the private sector,” Angelo says. “Our major concern was that if you were a private sector donor to Mike Blouin’s bonus and then your company then came to the state and asked for an economic development grant that was a definite conflict of interest for the director who would ultimately be handing out the grants.”

Vilsack backed down from his idea of financing part of Blouin’s salary that way, and instead shifted tax dollars around in the state budget to pay Blouin’s bonus. Angelo says legislators did agree that Blouin deserved the bonus. “We wanted to recruit a top-notch person out of the private sector and certainly we were competing with the private sector for a top-notch person in that job,” Angelo says.

Blouin’s bonus was among the list of about a thousand bonuses paid to state workers that were detailed in a report released Tuesday by the Legislative Oversight Committee. Blouin says his own bonus shouldn’t have been a surprise to legislators.
“I’m amazed that it’s even newsworthy,” Blouin says. “It’s a three-and-a-half-year-old story. Nothing’s changed.”

Blouin resigned as Vilsack’s economic development director last July to run for governor and he lost to Chet Culver in the Democratic primary earlier this month. Blouin says his bonus was not paid in a lump sum, but spread out equally in the check he got from the state every two weeks, so he didn’t get a big pay-out just before he left the job last July.

Senator Angelo says legislators believe their agreement to Blouin’s bonus made Vilsack bolder about awarding bonuses to other employees. “In talking about the bonuses that were utilized…by Mike Blouin, this governor took that as license to really use that as a more regular practice than I think previous administrations did,” Angelo says. The report released Tuesday by the Legislature’s Oversight Committee covers just the last two years.

Filed Under: Politics & Government Tagged With: , , ,

Deal to open Japan back up to U-S beef in works

June 21, 2006 By

Talks with trade negotiators have apparently produced an agreement for Japan to begin buying U.S. beef again. Up till 2003, that Asian nation was the number-one foreign buyer of our beef, and Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson says Japanese inspectors had approved some plants to process meat when exports resumed briefly earlier this year. The Tyson plant in Denison is one of those.

Mickelson says each of Tyson’s nine beef plants across the country had previously been approved to produce meat for export to Japan, and he says over the next four weeks their inspectors will audit those and other plants in this country, “to verify the effectiveness of the U.S. inspection system.”

After a brief resumption early this year, the exports abruptly halted once again after spinal tissue was found in a box of beef sent to Japan, a violation of one of the rules they’d set up.

Mickelson says it was a plant out east that made the costly goof, not one here in the Midwest. He says the new agreement is encouraging. If everything goes as planned, he says US companies like Tyson could resume shipping beef to Japan by early August. While it’s good news, Mickelson says Japan will only accept beef from cattle slaughtered at 20 months of age or younger, which will limit sales.

More rules have also been added since Japan last bought beef from U.S. producers on a large scale. There are some new documentation requirements U-S-D-A put in place a few months ago, to make sure the proper product is being exported by U.S. plants, and Mickelson says other measures include future unannounced audits by Japanese and US inspectors of approved plants.

In 2003, American beef producers sold about one-point-four billion dollars worth of beef to Japanese customers. That was about three-point-six percent of the beef produced in the country that year. The Iowa Beef Industry Council says Iowa ranks fifth among the states in fed-cattle production.

Filed Under: Agriculture Tagged With: ,

Denison holds annual Donna Reed Festival

June 21, 2006 By

The birthplace of Iowa actress Donna Reed is holding its annual performing arts festival and workshop, which opened today (Wednesday) and runs through the weekend. Pat Fleshner is coordinating the events in Denison, which offer to teach everything from all degrees of acting, improvisation, singing, career counseling and screenplay writing.

There’s a writers’ workshop this year featuring Michael Zack, a current Hollywood writer. Other instructors include: Eddie Foy, a former casting director for A-B-C and N-B-C: Gigi Perreau, an M-G-M child star who appeared on shows ranging from “The Brady Bunch” to “Gunsmoke;” and Tony Owen, the award-winning photographer and son of Donna Reed.

Fleshner says this year’s kid-specific activities have been modified and the children’s musical theatre workshop is already underway. Instead of two age groups, as in the past, the students are being divided into three groups this year, ages 5-8, 9-11 and 12-14.

Fleshner says a new play will premiere at this year’s festival and a nationally-known children’s theatre playwright will be in Denison for the event. The play “The Nitnoid Wars” takes place in California around 2015 and follows a group of young survivors of a natural disaster who are rebuilding their lives. Playwright Gail Erwin will be available for questions and answers after the Thursday night performance.

The Donna Reed Festival runs through Saturday. For more information, call (712) 263-3334 or surf to “www.donnareed.org”.

Related web sites:
Donna Reed Festival info

Filed Under: Recreation & Entertainment

Murray woman faces lawsuit from former employer

June 21, 2006 By

A Murray woman who is already facing 11 counts of first-degree theft now also faces a lawsuit from her former employer. Vanmark Corporation filed the suit against Jeannette and Vince Johnson for knowingly, willfully, recklessly and or maliciously misappropriating at least 600-thousand dollars for their own use.

Vanmark is requesting the Johnson’s fully compensate them for its monetary loss, interest, attorney fees, punitive damages and other relief the court deems just and equitable. No court date has yet been set for the case.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Big Ten creates its own TV network

June 21, 2006 By

The Big Ten Conference is getting into the network television business. Commissioner Jim Delaney announced the league is creating the Big Ten Channel which will focus primarily on the non-revue sports. The Fox Cable Network will be the majority owner and operator of the network that Delaney calls “the destination for all things Big Ten.”

Delaney says the new channel will nearly double the amount of conference sporting events that are televised. He says the amount of football and basketball will stay fairly stable as they’ve already been televising most games. Delaney says most of the growth will occur in the Olympic sports, women’s basketball.

The Big Ten also signed a new ten year deal with ABC and ESPN to carry football and men’s basketball games and Delaney says the new deal will add to the number of games that are televised nationally. Delaney says there’ll be substantial growth in the number of basketball games on ESPN and some growth in football broadcasts.

Besides the exposure the new television package will provide a financial windfall for the 11 schools in the conference. Iowa will receive an additional 7.5 million dollars from the Big Ten in the first year of the deal.

Athletic director Bob Bowlsby says it will help slow the escalation of ticket prices, as Bowlsby says they have concerns about broadbased access to the programs. He says the new network will be marketed nationwide, and Bowlsby says it will extend the reach of the conference.

Bowlsby says while the Big Ten is the first conference to start its own network, it won’t be the last. Bowlsby says the other major conferences like the A-C-C, Big 12 are having the same conversations, the Big 10 just happens to be a little ahead.

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Congressman King’s comments draw criticism from opponent

June 21, 2006 By

Congressman Steve King’s November opponent accuses the congressman of “vituperative and uncivil behavior” during his speech at this past weekend’s Iowa Republican State Convention.

King drew laughter and extended applause from the crowd with these comments about the U.S. military’s killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. “He was always looking for another way to go to a deeper depth, and now I’ll contend that’s where he is today,” King said, as GOP convention delegates applauded. “And what occurred to me that morning is something that I imagine a lot of you have thought about and he’s probably figured it out by now. There probably are not 72 virgins in the hell he’s at and if there are, they probably all look like Helen Thomas.”

The crowd at the Republican state convention laughed at the reference to the 85-year-old White House reporter who has covered every president from J-F-K to the current President Bush, but Joyce Schulte, the Democrat running against King, doesn’t find King’s comments funny.

“I found them to be derogatory and insulting and less than what I would expect from a congressperson,” Schulte says. She says no one should be “surprised” by King’s remarks at this point in his career, but Schulte says his “desultory” and “mean-spirited” comments about the appearance of the elderly journalist were so low she had to respond.

“Thomas, I’m certain, can defend herself very, very well. She’s a marvelous journalist,” Schulte says. “I hate to reconnect her in a sense because she’s so much more gracious than what this comment was from Mr. King.” But even before King mentioned Helen Thomas, the G-O-P convention delegates repeatedly interrupted King with laughter and applause as he talked about his reaction to the capture of al-Zaqawi.

“When we captured Saddam Hussein, I thought I would celebrate (in) the fashion that the Iraqis did. I went out and shot my shotgun into the air,” King said, to laughter and applause. “This time I was in Washington, D.C. and they frown on those kind of things.”

White House correspondent Helen Thomas used to sit in the front row of presidential news conferences, but because of her acrimonious relationship with the current president and his staff she has been relegated to the back row.

For example, in 2003 a California newspaper published comments Thomas made after a Society for Professional Journalists awards banquet — Thomas called the current President Bush the worst president in American history.

To read King’s comments, and Schulte’s written statement reacting to them, log on to the Radio Iowa blog on this website.

Filed Under: Politics & Government

New fuel under development that could help corn producers

June 21, 2006 By

The development of a new type of fuel could provide Iowa corn growers with another market for their grain. DuPont, the parent company of Iowa-based Pioneer Hi-Bred International, is partnering with B-P to start producing what it calls biobutanol.

Pioneer’s Desiree Fletcher-Hayes says the fuel has similarities with ethanol, but with a few key differences. Fletcher-Hayes says biobutanol has properties that make it a high-performance fuel but it’s produced from agricultural feedstocks like corn, wheat and sugar beets, much like ethanol. While ethanol reduces a vehicle’s fuel efficiency, she says biobutanol increases efficiency.

Also, the ethanol blend E-85 requires a special engine type, while biobutanol will work in any car. Fletcher-Hayes says an ethanol plant in England is being converted to make biobutanol, which should be on the U.K. market in 2007. She says butanol has been around for some time but the new version, bio-butanol, is more environmentally-friendly and it’s more economical, plus, it can be made from renewable sources.

Fletcher-Hayes says the project is all overseas for now but she sees biobutanol coming to the U.S. eventually for domestic production and use as another way to eliminate America’s reliance on foreign oil. Fletcher-Hayes says biobutanol isn’t an alternative to ethanol, it’s a complement to ethanol, “but the great thing for growers is that it will be an opportunity to expand markets for their grains once it is available on a wider basis.”

Biobutanol costs more than ethanol to make, but she says biobutanol can be shipped through pipelines, unlike ethanol. Biobutanol reportedly would qualify for the same federal price subsidies as ethanol — of about 50-cents a gallon.

Filed Under: Agriculture Tagged With: ,
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